INTERVIEWER: Did you get the same sort of reaction to your characters when The Shipping News was made into a film?
And they all begin the same way-I’m not gay, but . . . The implication is that because they’re men they understand much better than I how these people would have behaved. I can’t tell you how many of these things have been sent to me as though they’re expecting me to say, Oh great, if only I’d had the sense to write it that way. It’s about homophobia it’s about a social situation it’s about a place and a particular mindset and morality. They can’t understand that the story isn’t about Jack and Ennis. So they rewrite the story, including all kinds of boyfriends and new lovers and so forth after Jack is killed. They can’t bear the way it ends-they just can’t stand it. And one of the reasons we keep the gates locked here is that a lot of men have decided that the story should have had a happy ending. I think it’s important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience, but unfortunately the audience that “Brokeback” reached most strongly have powerful fantasy lives.
So many people have completely misunderstood the story. I’m used to that response from people here, who generally do not like the way I write. A large section of the population is still outraged. INTERVIEWER: Did people object to the fact that gay characters were in the center of a story about Wyoming? It’s just been the cause of hassle and problems and irritation since the film came out. PROULX: I wish I’d never written the story. And unfortunately, they got a life of their own for too many other people too. It took at least six weeks of steady work, which is not my usual pace. But I think it happened with “Brokeback Mountain” because it took me so long to write that story. PROULX: That was true of a number of the characters in Fine Just the Way It Is. INTERVIEWER :You’ve said that the characters of Jack and Ennis from “Brokeback Mountain” were the first two characters that started to feel “very damn real” to you.